Nice Ludum Dare this was! allow me to start by saying that I had a the most awesome time with all of you guys, as usual, so thanks for that 😀
This weekend started pretty badly, and for the sake of irony, right after the theme (you are the villan) was announcedI almost got robbed coming back home. After that, and as you might see on the timelapse later, it influnced a lot on the final design of the game. After that I tried to keep up with my original plans for the game, but my mind was so messed up, that I couldnt have any work properly done. So I went to sleep triying to accomodate my head and thoghts.
On the next hours everything went better and better, I woke up completely renewed, still with some hangover, but in a pleasant working mood and much more relaxed. drank some coffee, eat some cake, and started coding and drawing a preliminary platforming engine. From then things went their natural course, influenced by my previous night I had my villan, a thief, and pretty much had an idea on my head about what to do with him. I also was decided to make a simple 4-colour palette style and a gameboy-like screen size, to compensate all the lost time and get into the game as quickly as possible without worring much about the looks.
Starting day 2 I had all the basic stuff done and I was missing the actual gameplay. This is where my mistakes start; having the basics done and no gameplay at such point of the compo is pretty bad, and I knew that, but I kept working on secondary stuff I saw then as very important. This wasnt wrong, it was work that had to be done sometime on the weekend, but having left the gameplay for the last 12 hours didnt allowed me to make any sudden changes to it, just keep going with all I had in mind, and get in time for the deadline!
Now, I never got to add a couple things I wanted wich are pretty important. The most important missing feature I guess its cops. Being a villan with no good guys to stop you is boring! this is a key flaw in the game, and I know it! this was because I needed to add this after I finish the gameplay, as my idea of cops where guys with weapons chasing you, and shooting to you, I needed to have pretty much everything else done before starting to work on them. I finished all of that, but when I started writing the cops AI it was too late, just 15 minutes before the compo ends.
Title screen
What went right:
- I kept on going even after what happened the night before starting, almost quit then but now I am glad I havent!
- Even trough it was a time-related descition, the gameboy style turned out pretty well, despite some visual flaws due to my inexperience in low color-depth design.
- Slept a lot and didnt missed a single food, kept me energyzed all the time 😀
- I managed to somehow include something that happened to me into the game, not precisely how I would have liked, but feels great for a game to have your emotions bulked-in.
- Fortnately hte game works on HTML5 just as fine as in desktop, I know many will appreaciate that!
What went wrong;
- No cops = no good guys to beat
- Chronolapse crashed/closed? ~5 hs before the end and I didnt noticed.
- First time working with low color depth sprites, found it difficult to contrast dark areas and some other areas wich ended up being hadly noticeable.
- Controls are a bit hard to get used to, and I never made any tutorials or intro because they felt very natural for me while making them and so, I completely forgot.
- Never drew anything on paper for the final design, and so every stage, weapon, animation, and even style was improvised on-the-fly. that was bad, bad, bad.
I also ported the game to Android today, I only tested on my phone so dont kill me if its completely crazy, but it worked fine onmine so you should be Ok, you can check out all ports (html5, windows and android) in here!
Oh, and you can also see the timelapse, of crouse!
Cheers to everyone, especially everyone who chats around the IRC constantly, and dont forget to voteee! 😀
